Gardening, Nature & Weather–slightly skewed

Have you ever tried this? Everyone recommends eating the blossoms of nasturtiums. And they’re good–I won’t try to talk you out of that.

But these are the seeds. Normally I don’t let my annuals go to seed. Remember, when an annual sets seed, it thinks its done for the summer, so its blossoming slows way down.

But 2 things are different about nasturtiums. First, they are a vining annual so they want to keep growing in length.

Next if you recall my post a few weeks back about flowers in the vegetable garden (which is where these are ) I mentioned that nasturtiums were aphid magnets & that they drew aphids even in mid summer when aphids were scarce.

And sure enough as I was cleaning this bowl of seeds, what did I find but a few aphid nymphs (the tiny black specks in the photo ). Wonder how many I consumed when I was eating the seeds in the garden? Oh well. A little extra dirt & protein never hurt anyone.